BTC Library
Open Educational Resources
Library Services
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Open Textbooks
Find open textbooks as well as recent research on their impact on students.
Like traditionally licensed textbooks, open textbooks are written by experts in the field and many undergo a process of peer-review. Unlike the traditional publishing model, publishers and authors of open textbooks are funded through upfront payment models (philanthropic, publicly) instead of relying on sales to pay back their investments.
The Cost of Traditional Textbooks
It is estimated by the College Board that undergraduate students can expect to pay upwards of $1,200 a year for textbooks and supplies and students in Associate or Bachelors's degree programs spend more on textbooks than students in Masters or Doctorate degree programs. The cost of textbooks impacts student success and retention. Students who participated in the 2018 Florida Student Textbook Survey of more than 21,000 students shared how the high-cost of course materials impacted them:
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64.2% Do not purchase the required textbook
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42.8% Take fewer courses
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40.5% Do not register for a specific course
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35.6% Earn a poor grade
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22.9% Drop a course
Student Success with OER
Open textbooks offer a solution
- Eliminate cost barriers to students' attainment of credentials. Open textbooks are free and/or available at a low cost for print copies.
- Allow for flexible use for students and instructors. Students can access the content in their preferred format, on their preferred platform. Instructors can customize the material to match their course needs.
- Help students succeed. A recent, multi-institutional study showed that students using open textbooks in their courses performed as well or better than students using traditional textbooks and that they enrolled in more courses the following semester. Students using online open textbooks also gain ICT (information communication technology) skills.
Open Textbook Sources
Find open textbooks within these repositories and publishers on a variety of subjects.
- Open Textbook LibraryThe Open Textbook Library at the University of Minnesota offers a catalog of open, peer-reviewed textbooks that can be downloaded for free.
- OpenStaxOpenStax from Rice University offers free, peer-reviewed open textbooks. Includes instructor ancillaries.
- BC Campus Open EdThe BC Campus Open Ed project was developed in response to a goal of more affordable and accessible student materials through creating a collection of open textbooks aligned with the top 40 highest-enrolled subject areas in the Canadian province.
- SUNY Open TextbooksOpen SUNY Textbooks is an open access textbook publishing initiative established by State University of New York libraries and supported by SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grants. This pilot initiative published high-quality, cost-effective course resources by engaging faculty as authors and peer-reviewers, and libraries as publishing service and infrastructure.
- LibreTextsThe Bookshelves area in this LibreTexts Library holds texts that are curated by the LibreTexts Development team and can be used either directly or as content for building customized remixes (i.e., texts that are generated from existing content often with customized editing and/or content interspersed) for use in campus Course Shells.
- Saylor AcademyIn addition to other open educational content, Saylor Academy offers over 100 open textbooks under a variety of Creative Commons licenses.
- American Institute of MathematicsOpen textbooks that have been approved by the American Institute of Mathematics.
- Pressbooks DirectoryPressbooks is an open publishing platform used. The Pressbooks Directory provides an index of over 4,000 books published across Pressbooks networks
Guide Reuse and Attribution
Open Educational Resources (OER) content is under CC license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License